Most well-known conspiracies are rooted, even if only distantly, in fact: A blurry video, redacted government memos, a tragic real-life occurrence. But one of our absolute favorite conspiracies is one that is rooted in practically nothing, one that is so delightfully bonkers and out there that the idea of people actually believing in it strains belief. Behold: The lizard people!

The reptilian conspiracy

Lizard people are a common part of multiple folklore traditions and they show up frequently enough in fiction to have become a trope if you’re generous, a cliché if you’re less so. From ancient myths all over the world to various cryptozoological claims to the foundational level of a lot of the more bonkers conspiracies to appearances in books, television, movies and more, lizard people are clearly ingrained in our subconscious as well as the zeitgeist.

But how do you get from a common element in myth and fiction to a major worldwide conspiracy theory? One that claims that all aspects of government, business and religion are guided, if not outright controlled, by secret reptilian overlords masquerading as human beings? It’s a wild leap, and you don’t see anything similar with say, satyrs and fauns. So, how did we get there? The answer is one man: David Icke.

Initially a professional soccer player, Icke later transitioned into a sports broadcaster after arthritis put an early end to his sports career. By the late 1980s, however, Icke had grown increasingly political, becoming heavily involved with the British Green Party while also taking an interest in various New Age philosophies, specifically psychic abilities, culminating in a mystical experience at an ancient pre-Incan burial site.
Resigning from the Green Party, Icke began to position himself as a kind of psychic, predicting various natural disasters and even the end of the world itself in 1997 (none of which have come true). Eventually, however, his wild claims, particularly the one stating that he was the son of the godhead, caught up with him, as he became a figure of public ridicule. Two years after his purported end of the world, however, is when Icke’s story gets really interesting.

That’s because it was 1999 that saw the publication of Icke’s book, The Biggest Secret. It was this book that made the outlandish claim that human beings were created by reptilian aliens known as the Anunnaki. The tome also put forth several other ideas, many of which will seem familiar to anyone who has seen The Matrix movies, but for our purposes, it’s the lizard people claim that is most fascinating.

Conspiracy theories in general are not necessary bad, according to psychologists who study them. “If we were all completely trusting, it would not be good for survival,” explains Rob Brotherton, an academic psychologist and author of Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories. “Sometimes people really don’t have our best interests in mind.”

But when people leap from thinking their boss is trying to undermine them to believing their boss might be a secret lizard person, they probably cross from what psychologists refer to as “prudent paranoia” into illogical territory.

And there are a lot of illogical ideas to pick from. Around 66 million Americans believe that aliens landed at Roswell, New Mexico; around 22 million people believe that the government faked the moon landing; and around 160 million believe that there is a conspiracy surrounding the assassination of former US president John F Kennedy.

While aliens and fake moon landings probably trigger eyerolls in many of us, defining what constitutes a conspiracy theory is difficult, Brotherton says. The government, for example, does sometimes conspire to do the unspeakable, such as the infamous 1930s Tuskegee study, initiated by the US government to examine untreated syphilis in African-American men. Researchers blocked research participants from receiving penicillin or exiting the experiment to get treatment. The study continued until a media report made it public. In this case, believing that the government was conspiring to keep people sick would have been completely accurate.

David Icke is a well-known political commentator and proponent of the theory that human civilization descended from reptilians in the constellation Draco.

There are characteristics that help differentiate a conspiracy theory from prudent paranoia, Brotherton says. Conspiracy theories tend to depend on conspirators who are unduly evil, he explains, with genocide or world domination as a motive. Conspiracy theories also tend to assign an usually high level of competency to the conspirators, Brotherton adds, pointing out that when the government really does “shady stuff” it often isn’t able to keep it secret.

Chances are, we all know someone who believes some version of a conspiracy theory, which is why psychologists have been trying to understand what makes someone jump from logically questioning the world to looking for signs of lizard teeth in public figures. Research has shown that feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty are associated with a tendency to believe in conspiracies, says Karen Douglas, professor of social psychology at the University of Kent in the UK. Or as Joseph E Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and author of American Conspiracy Theories, puts it, “conspiracies are for losers”.

Say you’re not one to believe the mainstream media. Maybe you think climate change is an elaborate hoax or the medical community is trying to hide the myriad dangers of vaccinations. Perhaps you are utterly convinced the government is overrun by reptilian beings.

Where on Earth can you go to get away from it all, and mingle with those who share your views? Well, Conspira-Sea, of course. It’s a seven-day cruise where fringe thinkers can discuss everything from crop circles to mind control on the open sea. Last month’s cruise featured a caravan of stars from a surprisingly vast galaxy of skeptics and conspiracy theorists, including Andrew Wakefield, known for his questionable research and advocacy against vaccines. Also aboard was Sean David Morton, who faced federal charges of lying to investors about using psychic powers to predict the stock market.

But they had an outsider among them, and not one from another planet. Harvard-educated attorney Colin McRoberts is writing a book about people who believe in conspiracy theories, and used a crowdfunding campaign to book passage on the cruise. He blogged about his adventure and told us all about it—including the bit where the IRS arrested Morton when the ship returned to port.

What were some of the conspiracies discussed on board?

We had about a dozen presenters of all different stripes. Some technical or scientific experts, but only one scientific speaker, Wakefield, had a legitimate education. The rest were into new-age or were conspiracy theorists in the traditional sense. Or aliens. They all had their various specialties.

[…]

What was the relationship between the attendees and observers like you on board?

It was a very tense environment on the boat. There were a couple of instances in which the journalists on board had been treated poorly by a couple of the presenters. One of the journalists was ambushed in the Internet cafe by a couple who had accused her of being an agent of the CIA. She managed to persuade them that she was not an undercover agent.

According to people like Alex Jones and his ilke, Bilderberg is a super top secret, cone of silence, mysterious and all-powerful group of elite, world event manipulators. Bilderberg is the world’s puppeteers and we are their puppets.

Given the secrecy of these evil human-alien reptilian hybrid overlords, what would you say if i told you i have confirmed this year’s Bilderberg conference is set to take place starting today (June 11, 2015) through June 14, 2015, in Telfs-Buchen, Austria with a total of around 140 participants from 22 countries?

Evil human-alien reptilian hybrid overlords. If you see them, RUN!

You read correctly, right here in my little skeptical hands i am holding the official Bilderberg 2015 agenda, list of attendees and agenda! For example, i can tell you the Chairman is named Henri de Castrie and a few of the items on the agenda include:

Artificial Intelligence

Cybersecurity

Chemical Weapons Threats

Current Economic Issues

European Strategy

Globalisation

So how did i come upon such dark secrets? How was this information leaked? Did i have to rendezvous with dangerous, shadowy figures in the middle of the night? Is my life at risk for telling you this information?

I put this out there because every year about this time Alex Jones and company love to use spooky words like “secretive” and “leaked” to scream sensational headlines like: Bilderberg 2015 Meeting Dates, Attendees and Agenda Leaked!!!!

Did aliens visit the ancient Earth and inspire human cultures? Some people claim so.

UFO enthusiasts often cite June 24, 1947 as the beginning of the modern UFO phenomenon. On that day, Kenneth Arnold coined the term “flying saucer” for the unidentified objects he saw flying past Mount Rainier, and sparked the public’s interest in the idea of alien visitors from another world. But what if aliens had arrived on Earth sooner than that? What if they arrived a lot sooner? That’s the basis of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, which suggests that alien visitors have been coming to earth for not just decades, but centuries, and maybe even millennia.

Click the image to visit Ancient Aliens Debunked

Notions of an Earth visited the ancient past by aliens from another world date back at least a century. In many ways, the Cthulhu mythos, H. P. Lovecraft’s famous mythology of Great Old Ones from deep space who come to Earth and build eons-old cities, is an iteration of the Ancient Astronaut idea. In fact, it’s quite possible that Lovecraft’s stories greatly influenced Morning of the Magicians, a nonfiction French book written in the 1960s that give serious consideration to the idea of Ancient Astronauts visiting the Earth.

If you’ve heard of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis, however, the man you probably have to thank for it is Swiss author Erich Von Daniken. In 1968, Von Daniken drew on various ideas of ancient aliens, probably including the ideas expressed in Morning of the Magicians, and turned them into a book called Chariots of the Gods? In doing so, he launched the modern Ancient Astronaut hypothesis.

The argument put forth in Chariots of the Gods? is rooted in Clarke’s Third Law, which says that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”” In fact, the second chapter of Chariots of the Gods? sets the stage for the book with precisely that argument. Von Daniken asks readers to imagine what would happen if human spacefarers ever visited a distant world that was populated with a primitive alien culture. He argues that these primitive aliens would lack the vocabulary and knowledge to understand our advanced technology. Instead, they would view their human visitors as divine beings capable of incredible magic.

When our spaceship disappears again into the mists of the universe, our friends will talk about the miracle — “the gods were here!” They will translate it into their simple language and turn it into a saga to be handed down to their sons and daughters.

It’s from this premise, Von Daniken spun his theory: that if other spacefarers visited our primitive Earth cultures, then we too would view them as miraculous gods. And in fact they did visit, he argues, as evidenced by the great works that these primitive cultures simply could not have made on their own and the strange drawings and myths these cultures left behind.

Chariots of the Gods? was a bestseller, as were Von Daniken’s follow-up books with titles like Gods from Outer Space and In Search of Ancient Gods. They created a widespread public awareness of the Ancient Astronaut hypothesis that persists to this day.

Popularity doesn’t equate to quality, of course, and the book itself is full of flawed and spurious logic. As just one example . . .

Who are the Anunnaki? What is the Planet Nibiru? Click the image to find out.

The best conspiracy theories are like enchanting mazes of logic whose thresholds, once crossed, are hard to return from. As ludicrous as they can appear from a distance, the closer you get, the stronger their gravity and the greater the danger of being sucked in. How else to describe the extraordinary rebirth of David Icke? Best known to some as the former BBC sports presenter who appeared on Wogan in a turquoise tracksuit implying he might be the son of God, to the post-Twin Towers generation he’s the visionary master of conspiracy, performing his unscripted 10-hour lecture about the secret forces that rule the world to sell-out crowds at Wembley Arena.

A 2011 BBC poll found that 14 per cent of Britons believed 9/11 was an inside job. Just as conspiracy websites are flourishing, so are those dedicated to undermining them, such as Snopes, The Skeptic’s Dictionary and Skeptoid. The number one debunking podcast on iTunes, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe, claims a weekly listenership of 120,000 and tens of millions of downloads since its 2005 launch.

Icke often describes his work as “dot connecting”. But connecting dots is precisely how all sorts of mistakes about reality arise. “Our brains evolved to spot patterns in the environment and weave them into coherent stories,” says psychologist and conspiracy theory expert Dr Rob Brotherton. “We’re all conspiracy theorists because of the way our minds work. It’s how we make sense of the world. But it’s easy to connect dots that shouldn’t be connected.”

Confirmation bias: Selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one’s beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one’s beliefs.

So humans are rampant dodgy dot connectors, and they also suffer from an array of biases that make them susceptible to faulty belief. “We’re biased towards seeing intentions in the world, to think things were done deliberately instead of being chaotic,” says Dr Brotherton.

“There’s also a proportionality bias, so we want to think that when something big happens in the world it has a big explanation. In the case of JFK, you don’t want to believe some guy you’ve never heard of killed the most important man in the world and changed the course of history. Another is confirmation bias – when we get an idea in our head it’s very easy to find evidence that seems to support it. It takes a very unusual mind to de-convince itself. We’re made to believe.”

And some of the theories out there at the moment really take some believing. Here are five: . . .

On Tuesday, the political fate of America was once again put to a vote. But for the millions of Americans who believe in lizard people, this vote had bigger implications — like thwarting an ongoing plot of world domination.

The idea of shape-shifting lizards taking human forms in a plot to rule America and the world has become one of the most majestic and marvelous conspiracy theories created by mankind (or lizardkind, if you will). In 2008, “lizard people” found its way onto the Minnesota’s midterm ballot with some controversy.

As pundits extrapolate on what the Republican win in the midterms means for the country, there are people around this country who hope their votes did something crucial — kept the country safe from lizard people for the next few years.

Here is a brief guide to this world of lizard people true believers.

What is a lizard person?

It’s just what it sounds like.

Lizard people are cold-blooded humanoid reptilians who have the power to shape-shift into human form. According to David Icke, a new-age philosopher and one of the most prominent theorists in the lizard people game, these creatures have had their claws in humankind since ancient time, and world leaders like Queen Elizabeth, George W. Bush, the Clintons, and Bob Hope are all lizard people.

“Encroaching on other conspiracy theorists’ territory, Icke even claims that the lizards are behind secret societies like the Freemasons and the Illuminati,” Time reported.

Icke’s 1998 book, The Biggest Secret, is considered an important tome in lizard people theory.

Wait. People actually believe in this stuff?

Yes.

How many Americans believe in lizard people?

Back in April of 2013, Public Policy Polling conducted a poll about conspiracy theories like aliens, an impostor Paul McCartney, and, of course, lizard people. And the polling organization found that 4 percent of Americans believe in lizard people, while another 7 percent were unsure. Taken to its absurd extreme, that would imply around 12 million Americans, Philip Bump, a lizard person scholar and writer at the Washington Post, found. (Public Policy Polling is a serious outlet, but it’s also known for some trolly polls, so these results have to be taken with a grain of salt.)

Keep in mind that this might not be counting all the people who, in their heart of hearts, believe that lizard people exist but are nervous that they will be found out if they publicly disclose their beliefs.

How do those who believe in lizard people know when someone is a lizard person?

There are many differing theories. If you look at the forums on Icke’s site, there are numerous posts either telling people how to spot lizard people or asking how to pick a lizard person out from the crowd.

Bump, one of the top lizard person journalists in the field, made a handy guide last year that culled lizard-person identifiers. Here’s the list of lizard person tells:

Not literally, of course. I wouldn’t want that to get out as some kind of meta-conspiracy-theory. But I’ve noticed that although the conspiracy theories themselves never seem to die, the conspiracy theorists seem to have a relatively short half-life before they implode.
Again, not literally. Don’t get your hopes up.

I think the reason for this is that once you abandon logic and evidence as the sine qua non of understanding, you are out in some kind of netherworld of lies, suppositions, and paranoia, and it’s only a matter of time before you become victim to the same foolishness you were perpetrating. You give people the impression that no one is to be trusted, that anyone and everyone could be part of the conspiracy, and before you know it, your followers have decided that you’re right… and include you in the assessment.

So it’s with some degree of amusement that I report to you that it’s finally happened to the archduke and court jester of the conspiracy theory world — David Icke and Alex Jones.

Icke was outed, fittingly enough, in a YouTube video in which he is caught “shape-shifting into a Reptilian.” Odd, isn’t it, that these Reptilian overlords of ours are brilliant enough to infiltrate themselves into every level of government, break into the sanctum sanctorum of military intelligence, and then can’t remember to keep their costumes in place when they’re on the air? But yes, you heard it here first: Icke, who said that Reptilians are in control of everything from the CIA to the U.S. public education system, is himself a Reptilian.

Even more wryly amusing is the fact that Alex Jones had the whistle blown on the site Before It’s News, because they’re about the only website that is even more bizarrely paranoid than Jones’s own site InfoWars. Here’s the exposé about Jones . . .

Some people would call David Icke controversial. I would call him a brilliant psychotic.

His ability to speak for hours on an incomprehensible doctrine is stunning. But listen carefully and the methods of his madness become apparent.

He has a brilliant talent for the subtle interweaving of plausible with crazy, and packaging the in-between gray areas as thought-terminating clichés like “secret societies”, “brotherhood”, “free masons” and other slogans and catchphrases popular with modern conspiracy thinking.

The magic is in his ability to dispense seemingly innocuous tidbits of (allegedly true) earth history one moment, then slipping in talk of aliens crossbreeding with humans the next moment. Talk sane, touch on some crazy, go back to the safety of sane. Rinse and repeat until the listener can swallow the crazy with the sane.

This ability to subtlely slide in and out of the realm of plausible is the same potent cocktail used by science fiction writers to blur the lines between the possible and the impossible to keep viewers coming back for more.

This 25 minute video has been distilled from a 217 minute video. I’ve removed the plausible to expose the rest. Enjoy.

The items on this varied list may not all warrant heightened vigilance and tin foil hats, but better safe than sorry. So we’re all better prepared for welcoming the Lizard People, when they finally choose to reveal themselves, and assimilating to the New World Order, here are some of the best conspiracy theories and urban legends in the U.S.

10 • Area 51, probably underground, Nev.

Arguably, the country’s most famous conspiracy theory is focused on this remote part of Edwards Air Force Base in Southern Nevada. Also known as Groom Lake, it’s assumed the base is used to test aircraft and weapons systems. The air space overhead is absolutely restricted. Even Air Force pilots aren’t allowed to breach the perimeter. The extraordinary secrecy surrounding the base has fueled several Area 51 conspiracy theories over the years ranging from a lab/prison for studying aliens (both living and dead), a meeting place for Earthlings and aliens working in tandem on various projects, reverse engineering and testing of captured/recovered alien technology, developing a weather control system, time travel and teleportation technology and much more. All that said, nothing can be certain as everything that occurs in Area 51 is classified as “Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information.” The CIA didn’t publicly acknowledge the existence of the base until July 2013.

9 • Denver Airport, Colo.

A detail of a mural in Denver International Airport, subject of much conspiracy theorist interest. A plea for peace, or a plan for future martial law?

Another conspiracy theory layer cake spot is Denver International Airport. That it was built while Denver had a perfectly good airport much closer to the city is the jumping off point for these theories. (For the record, experts have pointed out that the runway layout at the old airport was no longer efficient enough for the increased traffic.) It’s believed that building the new airport allowed for the secret construction of an underground headquarters for the Illuminati, or the New World Order, or the Neo-Nazis, or the Lizard People and so on. The vaguely Swastika-shaped runways, the (admittedly) disturbing murals and sculptures, and odd words engraved in the floor also fuel the theories. Furthermore, there is the question of funding. A stone in the terminal says the airport was funded by “The New World Airport Commission,” a nebulous entity, sanely theorized to be a group of local businesses, though many claim it doesn’t exist.

8 • UFO cover-up, Roswell, N.M.

Though it’s now mainly fueled by local businesses wanting to cash in on tourist interest, the (alleged!) Roswell UFO incident of 1947 is the most popular (alleged!) UFO cover-up of all time and still merits time and energy among conspiracy theorists and movie/TV writers. Various people claim that a spacecraft with alien occupants crashed on a ranch near Roswell in June or July 1947, which was quietly hauled away for study, possibly by our friends at Area 51. The Air Force reported at the time that the object was a surveillance balloon. The conspiracy chatter didn’t flare up until 1978 when Major Jesse Marcel, who was involved with the recovery of the debris, gave an interview describing a spacecraft crash cover-up by the military. Since then additional witnesses have emerged, describing the cover-up and alien autopsies. These days, even passionate pro-UFO advocates generally dismiss Roswell as a hoax.

7 • Grassy knoll in Dallas, Texas

The grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, where the 1963 assasination of US President John F. Kennedy took place in Dallas.

The Warren Commission concluded that there was no conspiracy involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. However, after Lee Harvey Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, an event that also brims with conspiracy, the theories that Oswald didn’t act alone or maybe wasn’t involved at all started flying. The situation was exacerbated in 1979 when the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations announced “…a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President.” Furthermore, while he was living in Belarus, it’s said Oswald was such a terrible shot that friends were afraid to go hunting with him. The dazzling list of conspiracy theories put forward at one point or another involve the collusion of one or more parties including the CIA, the FBI and/or FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, Castro himself, then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the KGB.

6 • Kensington Runestone, Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minn.

Kensington Runestone

Evidence that Scandinavian explorers pushed as far as the Midwest of the future United States in the 14th century or a 19th-century hoax? The Kensington Runestone is a 200 lb slab of greywacke inscribed with runes on the face and side. The story goes the stone was found in 1898 in the rural township of Solem, Minnesota (it gets its name from Kensington, a nearby settlement) by Swedish immigrant Olof Olsson Ohman. The Stone appears to describe an expedition of Norwegians and Swedes who camped in the area, then retreated to their boat at “the inland sea” after 10 were slaughtered by unknown assailants. Runologists and linguistic experts overwhelming agree that the language used on the stone is too modern (circa the 19th century, coincidentally) and didn’t match other writing samples from the 1300s. However, the legend persists, being occasionally revived with new evidence and arguments, some as recently the 1990s.

The only unsolved case of air piracy in U.S. history was perpetrated by an unidentified man who the media came to call “D. B. Cooper.” (The hijacker purchased his ticket using the alias “Dan Cooper.”) On November 24, 1971, Cooper hijacked a passenger plane (a Boeing 727) during a Portland-Seattle flight. Claiming he had a bomb, he made his ransom plans known to the crew. On the ground in Seattle, Cooper released the passengers after officials gave him the requested $200,000 (equivalent to $1,160,000 today) and two parachutes. With only Cooper and the crew aboard, the plane then took off heading for Mexico. When they stopped in Reno to refuel, Cooper was gone, having jumped from the rear stairs while the plane was likely still over Washington State. Cooper was never found and it’s widely believe he couldn’t have possibly survived the fall, over remote mountainous wilderness, at night, wearing a trench coat and loafers, no helmet, into an initial wind chill at the airplane’s altitude of “70∞ F. The FBI investigation into the case remains open to this day.

After four years of writing this blog six times a week, you’d think I’d be inured. You’d think I’d long ago have stopped running into weird ideas that I hadn’t heard of. You’d think it’d be impossible to surprise me any more.

You’d be wrong.

You’ve heard about the whole Reptilian Alien thing, right? That prominent individuals, especially world leaders but also including a lot of entertainers, are actually aliens in human suits? Well, just yesterday, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link to the homepage of the Doppelgänger and Identity Research Society, which takes it one step further:

Many prominent individuals are actually cleverly-wrought doubles. Clones. Twins from different mothers.

But unlike ordinary twins, or even clones, in which both individuals coexist, here the duplicate has replaced the original, and the original is no more.

Upon reading this, I was reminded of the quote from Spock on Star Trek: “A difference that makes no difference is no difference.” If there’s only one Brad Pitt — i.e., no one is really claiming that there are two of ’em walking around, as far as I can see — and he is identical to Brad Pitt, doesn’t that make him, um, Brad Pitt?

Apparently not. Here’s an explanation of the difference, from the site:

Human doubles are made by other humans from the DNA of a single cell, where a replica of the physical body is reproduced. That clone is only physical and has no soul, therefore, it has no God-connection. Clones can mate and reproduce clone children. A clone and a souled-human can mate and, again, only reproduce clone children.
Humans have no means to create a soul in another human clone, therefore, human clones have no soul and no concept of right and wrong, no conscience and no compassion. They have survival instinct and are greatly concerned about their own death, but not the welfare and death of others.
This explains why so many people today have no values, no morals, no ethics and are prone to violence.
They are more easily programmed through our mind-control type education and military training than are souled-humans with a freewill. Clones have no freewill, only a sense of survival, and will act accordingly through conditioned behavior.
The eye is the window of the soul. In the eye of another souled-human you can sense the Light emanating from the soul, the God Spirit within. As I said earlier, soul or God Spirit within, so there is no God-connection to the eternal Light of Creator Source. Therefore, there is no the human clone has no spiritual discernment. The eyes of a human clone may appear dull, blank, hollow, dark, vacant, lifeless, empty with no vibrancy or Light. They have no reaction to or understanding of spiritual energy, concepts or conversation.

Well, notwithstanding the fact that the last paragraph could be describing me before I’ve had a cup of coffee in the morning, the whole thing seems pretty… subjective. Even the website admits that the synthetic humans are just like regular humans, down to the genetic level, even though their science seems a little shaky in other respects . . .

Thanks to never-ending reports of encounters and sightings, UFOs are easily one of the most recognized and well-known icons of modern pop culture. In fact, the fascination has even spawned whole religions with UFOs and aliens as the centerpiece. Of course, we also mustn’t forget the different UFO conspiracy theories being continuously peddled by people who either really want to know the truth or are just plain wacko. In any case, it’s certain that these conspiracy theories will never go out of style, especially when most of them are just downright insane.

10 • There Is An Alien Satellite Hovering Over Earth

This conspiracy theory states that a 13,000-year-old satellite called the Black Knight is orbiting our planet. As the story goes, Nikola Tesla was the first man to discover its existence after he began receiving radio signals in 1899 which he believed came from space, a claim also made by amateur radio operators in the early 20th century. Later on, newspaper reports in the 1950s and ’60s detailing the discovery of a mysterious object in space coupled with supposed photographic evidence helped to fuel belief in the Black Knight’s existence.

If this supposed satellite really does exist, then why is it there? According to Scottish writer Duncan Lunan, the Black Knight satellite is actually a space probe that contains a map to a faraway alien planet called Epsilon Bootis, and the unidentified radio signals are in fact an attempt by those inhabitants to communicate with humans. Although skeptics have sought to debunk the alien satellite as nothing more than space junk or debris, believers have continued to insist otherwise.

9 • MacArthur And Alien Warfare In The Future

Did Douglas MacArthur, the man who led the US against the Japanese and later the Koreans and Chinese, foresee a future war against aliens? According to a supposed speech he made in 1955, MacArthur warned that all countries of the Earth should unite, because the next war would involve humanity against aliens from other planets. Conspiracy theorists closely tie the general’s statements with his alleged involvement in the creation of the ambiguous Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, a government agency supposedly tasked with investigating mysterious UFO crashes in the 1950s and which was later absorbed by the Air Force. As the story goes, the IPU’s findings that UFOs constituted a threat to national and global security was what prompted MacArthur to render his speech.

MacArthur’s statements, although somewhat sensationalized later on by the media, nonetheless manifested his belief that someday in the future, all of us might experience a real-life version of Independence Day.

8 • The US Government Secretly Sent Astronauts To Another Planet

According to this conspiracy theory, the administration of President JFK—and, later, Johnson—allegedly sent astronauts to a faraway planet called Serpo. The ambitious project began after the US government supposedly saved the life of an alien whose spacecraft crashed in Roswell. In return, the grateful alien established an exchange program with the government and made arrangements for two spaceships to pick it up along with a dozen specially trained astronauts in 1965. After 37 light-years, the astronauts finally reached Serpo and spent more than a decade learning about the planet and its inhabitants, a race called Ebens.

According to them, the Ebens numbered more than 600,000 but lived in a peaceful, government-free community. After 13 years, the team finally returned to Earth four members short after two of them died and another two chose to stay on Serpo. Unfortunately, there are no surviving members of the team today, as all of them supposedly succumbed to the high radiation levels brought on by the two suns of Serpo.

7 • Jesus Was An Alien

Remember the belief that the gods that ancient people worshiped and revered were actually aliens? If that theory is to be believed, then Jesus might have also been one, a fact that is supposedly being suppressed by the Church. As the theory goes, all the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ life hinted at extraterrestrial origins. His “virgin birth,” for instance, could be attributed to aliens artificially inseminating Mary, which in turn would explain why he could perform miraculous feats as well as communicate with otherworldly beings such as angels (who themselves were actually aliens).

Believers also point to Jesus’ statements that he was “not of this world” as hints of his real heritage. The theory goes on to say that after his resurrection, Jesus was beamed up into a spaceship and that the Catholic Church later suppressed the rest of the details by marking books such as the Epistles of the Apostles as apocryphal.

The Internet was meant to usher in a new enlightenment, instead it is became the breeding ground of ideas increasingly at odds with reality.

The Reptilian’s cloaking field breaks down and begins to phase shift, its inhuman visage briefly visible through a haze of holographic error. Slowed down and set to music, it is an eerie, emotive, and strangely beautiful sight. Our alien slavemasters the Annunaki are getting sloppy, not even caring if their true forms are visible to us any more. Wake up, sheeple, wake up and see what is before your eyes!

Or, at least this is what some followers of David Icke and other reptilian “researchers” seem to think. According to this video, which at time of writing has over 155,000 views, it appears that some of his disciples are so seduced by the strange worldview that they see trans-dimentional shapeshifters where others see video glitches or interference errors. A new face for an ancient malevolence, hitherto visualised mentally in dragon statues or crumby drawings of lizard-men. YouTuber MKirkbll comments “Finally! A legitimate shapeshifting video! I so badly wanted to believe. Now I can. Thank you.” Like an X-Files era cliche, MKirkbll here “wants to believe”. And he is so desperate to believe in something, he is willing to believe in anything, as long as it all fits together to tell an understandable story and gives him a sense of belonging.

It is easy to look at such nonsense and laugh, but the existence of such beliefs tell us something much deeper about human psychology and our need to make sense of the world. Since the earliest times humans have together woven complex and colourful mythologies to explain the the world around them, and today is no different. During our evolution, our brains’ storytelling ability acted as a form of data compression to keep track of what information it deemed useful, tying sensory prompts to emotional and behavioural responses. The consequence of using language and stories to keep track of environmental information was the gradual development of a narrative Self. Through studying psychology, we also know how identity construction within a social environment leads to emergent group behaviours that in turn tell us how group narratives are formed.

Some of those lessons are particularly relevant to the online realm, where a breezy brand of digital utopianism has led to a belief that the free flow of information will lead to an end of ignorance and the triumph of reason. Instead, we see the rise of bizarre new ideologies and ideas spreading virally across the web, ushering in not a New Enlightenment, but an Age of Unreason.

Emergent Hierarchies

Group Psychology has been extensively studied over the last half century with theories supported by strong experimental evidence and predictive ability. Leon Festinger’s famous 1956 study of a flying saucer cult documented the moments in which the group’s ideology evolved in light of a failed doomsday prophecy. Cult leader Marian Keech had told her followers the world would end at midnight while they, the chosen few, would be swooped away to safety in the comfort of a spacecraft. However as armageddon failed to materialise, minutes ticked awkwardly by and the cult members began to wonder what was going to happen next. Eventually Keech concocted an absurd excuse to explain why the world had not ended; our prayer averted the apocalypse!

The study, which was a precursor to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance, is famous for predicting which members of the group would drift away and which would rationalise away the failure and turn in into something to strengthen rather than weaken their beliefs. But also interesting is that Festinger reported that . . .

Had enough government rhetoric? Tired of following the sheeple? Fed up with believing what THEY want you to believe? Maybe it’s time to branch out and discover THE TRUTH.

If you’re new to the exciting world of conspiracy theories and just can’t decide which paranoid delusion best suits you, then why not use this handy flowchart to find your ideal conspiracy theory. Then you too can go and stick it to THE MAN.

(Click image for larger view)

Click image for larger view

“You know, this explains a lot. Because all my life, I’ve had this unaccountable feeling in my bones that something sinister was happening in the universe and that no one would tell me what it was.” Arthur Dent

NB This is not intended to be a complete list, but please don’t let that stop you commenting to let me know what I’ve missed off 🙂

Conspiracy theories have floated around for generations with new ones popping up all the time. Here is a list counting down the World’s 15 biggest conspiracy theories of all time.

15. Life on Mars and the Annunaki:

Ever since photo’s of Mars were taken from the Viking orbiter in 1976, the answer to the question of if there was life on Mars seems to be yes. Photos depicting an enormous face staring up from the surface proved to be eerie. The pictures also include a sphinx and a 5-sided pyramid. When Zecharia Sitchin released findings of tablets in what used to be Sumeria, Sitchin describes the writings telling of the Anunnaki, a superior alien race that came down and taught the Sumerians new technology. Many speculate that the formations on Mars surface were built by the Anunnaki which also opened up the idea that the great pyramids were built by aliens using humans as slave workers.

14. Who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare?:

Since there is very little historical information about Shakespeare, conspiracy theorists believe that the actor could not have possibly written the plays but rather was used as the author to cover up the real identity of the brilliant poet. Many believe that Shakespeare himself could not of had the education to write such profound works. That the most plausible author could be either Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson, Francis Bacon or Sir Walter Raleigh.

13. Vaccination and autism:

Celebrity Jenny McCarthy has fought this fight for years and even Robert Kennedy Jr. voiced his opinion saying the politician believes there is a conspiracy between scientists and the vaccine industry to hide the truth about the ingredients in vaccine shots. McCarthy has said that mother’s from all over the world who have children with autism have said for years that, “We vaccinated our baby and something happened.”

12. Digital television and subliminal advertising:

Many conspiracy theorists believe that cameras and microphones have been secretly built into televisions so that the government could spy on people. Another theory along with this one is that subliminal messages are being broadcast to influence the viewers with what the government and big industries want people to believe.

11. Global Warming:

Global warming has been a hot topic ever since Al Gore brought it to the world’s stage but many theorists believe this to be a ruse in order to control the populations way of life, raise taxes and intended to lead to more controlling, tyrannical government.

10. The Holocaust:

Believe it or not there are many theorists out there who believe that the Holocaust is a hoax. Conspiracy theories claim that the Nazis never murdered over 6 million Jews during World War II but claims of the Holocaust was conspired by the Jews to advance their own interests and to justify the creation of Israel. The deniers claim that any deaths which occurred in concentration camps were from starvation or disease and not because of Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews. The Diary of Anne Frank the conspiracy theorists believe is a forgery.

Ancient aliens is the idea that aliens visited earth in the past. The idea of ancient aliens is not a new one either. Imagination is one of the most powerful tools in humanity’s evolutionary struggle for survival. As a race, we are hardwired to consider important concepts, such as the creation of life on Earth and the history of people on this planet. At some point, we are all presented with various explanations and theories regarding the expansion of human life on Earth. In the long history of mankind, the majority of these concepts have followed religious teachings, and the power of a spiritual God or Gods. In modern times, many people have come to challenge these claims.

The idea of evolution has been used to describe the gradual change of traits that living organisms undergo over time, which is related to the environment, but it doesn’t explain how the biological cells of human’s first ancestor were spawned. Because of the fact that everyone is interested in the creation of life on Earth, and concurrently we have been taught to believe in the power of religion and the impossibility of alien life, the idea that this article will be examining is controversial. It will be based around some concepts that have been labeled absurd by the scientific community, but let your imagination go, and have some fun with the list.

10 • Ancient Aliens

The idea surrounding ancient aliens is a basic one. It states that the human population was influenced by a group of extraterrestrials that visited Earth in the past. The ancient aliens were directly involved in the evolution of primates, including humans. It has been suggested that this was accomplished by way of genetic engineering, cross-breeding, or a combination of both, ultimately helping in the development of human cultures, technologies and religion. The idea first gained widespread exposure with the 1968 publication of Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken, but the concept has been around since the middle of the 19th century. A common variant of the idea includes proposals that deities from most, if not all, religions, including angels and demons, are actually extraterrestrials whose advanced technologies were taken by people as evidence of a divine status.

This concept is related to the religious practice of a cargo cult, which can be seen in modern day pre-industrial tribal societies. Especially during World War II, when indigenous people were contacted by soldiers with advanced equipment, such as guns and tanks. The cults subsequently attempted to obtain wealth through magic and religious rituals and practices. The ancient alien theory states that extraterrestrials purposely tricked the human population into believing they were Gods, creating religion to help people evolve more efficiently. The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

It has been proposed that, with the current age of the universe and its vast number of stars, if the Earth was typical, extraterrestrial life should be common. In response to this paradox, the zoo hypothesis has been suggested. It states that aliens generally avoid making their presence known to humanity, or avoid exerting an influence on development, somewhat akin to zookeepers observing animals in a zoo, or experimental scientists observing a study of life. Adherents of the hypothesis feel that the Earth and humans are being secretly surveyed using equipment located on Earth, or elsewhere in the Solar System. Charles Fort’s unpublished 1915 manuscript, novel X, describes how Martian beings or Martian events control life on Earth. Fort ultimately burnt the manuscript, but one surviving quote from it is “The Earth is a farm. We are someone else’s property.”

9 • Angels and Demons

The idea of ancient alien as astronauts has spawned a UFO religion named Raëlism. The Raelian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of the Elohim appeared human and were mistaken for angels, cherubim or gods. The Bible is full of accounts of angels and demons. The text mentions millions of angels and their experiences on Earth and in the heavens. In Christian tradition, demons are similar to angels. They are spiritual, immutable and immortal. The individual demon owns a specific knowledge, sometimes on only one subject. The apocryphal Book of Enoch recounts that a group of 200 rebellious angels, or Watchers, left heaven and came down to Earth to marry human women and have children with them.

The Quran depicts a story of angels that are given minds of their own, found in verse [2:34]. One of the angels was Iblis (Satan/Lucifer), who rebelled and was therefore banished on earth to create mischief amongst mankind. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, angels were all created as good beings, but some decided to become evil. It was written that angels do not need faith as they already have the knowledge of celestial things, which means that their action constitutes unforgivable sin. The idea of alien intervention on Earth can be found in the modern religious philosophy of Thelema. Thelema was developed by the early 20th century British writer, Aleister Crowley.

Crowley’s system of Thelema begins with The Book of the Law, which he claims was a direct dictation from an entity named Aiwass. Crowley later identified Aiwass as his own Holy Guardian Angel. The religion is founded upon the idea that the 20th century marked the beginning of the Aeon of Horus, in which a new ethical code would be followed; “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” The famed American rocket propulsion researcher, Jack Parsons, was one of the first Americans to take a keen interest in the writings of Aleister Crowley. Parsons research into rocket propulsion was some of the earliest in United States history. His pioneering work in the development of solid fuel, and the invention of Jet-fuel Assisted Take Off units for aircraft was of great importance to the start of humanity’s space age. The work of Parsons and his peers helped people usher in the age of space travel. Jack Parsons was largely self-educated.

8 • Men in Black

The extraterrestrial hypothesis is the theory that some unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are best explained as being extraterrestrial life or non-human aliens from other planets. The idea sounds simple to modern day humans, but it a relatively new concept that originated out of the saucer sightings and close encounters of the 1940s-1960s. Thousands of UFO sightings have been reported in the last 50 years, and one of the emerging themes in these events is the Men in Black. The Men in Black are men, or aliens, dressed in black suits who have been reported to harass or threaten UFO witnesses to keep them quiet about what they have seen. In most cases, the men claim to be government agents, but it is often suggested that they may be ancient aliens themselves.

People who have reported an encounter with the Men in Black often describe them as men of short stature with a deeply tanned and dark complexion. According to the accounts, Men in Black always seem to have detailed information on the person they contact, as if the individual had been under surveillance for a long period of time. They have been described as seeming confused by the nature of everyday items such as pens, eating utensils or food, as well as using outdated slang. Those who have encountered them say they produce identification, but when verification is later sought, the people described do not exist or have been dead for some time. Another defining characteristic of the Men in Black is wide grins and disconcerting giggles.

The phenomenon has been frequently reported since the 1950s and 1960s, but some researchers, including John Keel and others, have suggested similarities between the Men in Black reports and earlier demonic accounts. Keel suggests that the beings are a modern-day manifestation of the same phenomena that was earlier interpreted as the devil, or encounters with fairies. The term “the black man” has been used for centuries in reference to the Devil. In history, the Black Man was often reported as meeting with the accused and having sexual intercourse with them. Old Scratch or Mr. Scratch is another folk name for The Devil that is used in the local legends of New England and pre-Civil War America.

During the Middle Ages, the black man was not a person with African features, but rather a man colored black and dressed in black. In modern times, another phenomenon known as the Grinning Man has become associated with the Men in Black, and various reports of paranormal activity. These creatures are larger and characterized by a wide grinning face. In most cases, people describe a strange sensation of not being able to focus in on the Grinning Man. It has been suggested that the smile is an attempt by the aliens to conform to society and keep humans feeling safe, but in all reports the figure is described as extremely creepy. In the Half-Life series of first-person shooter video games, there is a mysterious character named G-Man that parallels some of the Men in Black descriptions.

Poisonous Government Snow

Georgia isn’t good at snow. Two inches fell in Atlanta last month and, amidst car crashes and television parodies, snow skepticism was born. Georgians bravely took to YouTube, determined to demonstrate that neither matches nor lighters nor blowtorches (a disproportionate number of Georgians seem to own blowtorches) could melt that strange, white stuff that the government insisted was just frozen water. On film, the snow blackens, twists like plastic, and stubbornly refuses to melt.Although entire Web pages are dedicated to debunking the chemical snow theory, the simplest way to deal with snow skeptics is to put the stuff in a microwave or on the stove. Spoiler: It melts. The blackened snow was caused by soot from the lighter, because butane burns inefficiently, and as snow turns into slush under a blowtorch, it only appears not to melt. Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait explains how the snow is, in fact, slowly melting.

The entire episode, however, brings up a good question: Who was the first Georgian to decide to burn the snow, just to see what would happen?

Invasion of the Lizard People

Look around you. If you’re in a room with 25 other people, odds are at least one of them believes the world is run by lizard people, according to a recent poll. Conspiracy junkies are well aware of the theory that cleverly disguised reptilian aliens traveled to Earth thousands of years ago to infiltrate our highest echelons of government. Proof exists in the form of terrifying YouTube videos revealing news anchors with reptilian eyes, and lack of any better explanation for Rob Ford.You can dispatch the reptilian eye claim with relative ease, but only if you’re willing to suffer through 3 minutes of this awful techno music. The quick version: If a video file is compressed, sped up, and zoomed in, a clever video editor can transform any human eye into a menacing reptilian slit. But if you insist on clinging to the lizard government theory, at least be prepared.

Siri Apocalypse

What is July 27, 2014? Check your calendar, and you’ll notice that it’s a Sunday. But ask Siri, and you might discover that the 27th is the appointed time for the Opening of the Gates of Hades. Several shocked iPhone users reported last month that Siri had officially scheduled the apocalypse for this summer, in an odd move that the usual suspects took quite seriously.This particular trick didn’t work when when we tried it, but we can’t promise it never happened. Apple developers are strange birds, and iPhone users are still discovering odd pearls of wisdom and other Easter eggs coded into Siri. Various sources attribute the arbitrary doomsday date in this conspiracy theory to a Chinese ghost month or the end of Ramadan, when Muslims believe that the gates of hell reopen. But a few weird programmers do not an apocalypse make, and we are fairly confident that Siri has no idea when the world will end.

Adam and Eve? Superintelligent Beings From Outer Space

Now that even Bill Nye has weighed in on the debate about creationism and evolution, some of us would welcome any sort of common ground between science and religion. The ancient alien theory may offer a solution: Adam and Eve were extraterrestrials who traveled to Earth aboard a space ark piloted by—you guessed it—Noah. Predictably, the conspiracy theorists say, proof of this story abounds—but the government insists on keeping it all under lock and key. Several “scholars” now claim that, through the Freedom of Information Act, they were finally able to access piles of declassified documents. Official reports, they say, prove that a flying saucer once crashed into Mt. Ararat in Turkey, where it is traditionally believed that Noah’s ark came to rest after the great Flood.

Anyway, it just doesn’t seem likely that Noah’s intergalactic starship, after tumbling through space and dodging meteor showers, finally ran aground in Turkey. But forgetting this silly story for a second, there is the real scientific idea of panspermia, which raises the possibility that our planet’s first single-celled organisms have extraterrestrial origins.

Everyone loves a juicy conspiracy theory. Were the moon landings faked? Was Di’s death really an accident? Was there a second gunman on the grassy knoll? Are the royal family actually lizards?

Oh come on, don’t pretend none of these have crossed your mind.

David Runciman

They’ve all crossed David Runciman’s mind. Yes, even that one. Why? Because the politics professor is deep into a five-year project to work out where, when, how and why conspiracy theories fester – and looking in particular at the link between conspiracy and democracy.

“These days when people have conspiracy theories, they tend to think their government is behind it,” explains David. “A classic modern example is 9/11. There are conspiracy theorists who believe that either the American government knew it was going to happen and didn’t tell anyone, or organised it as an excuse to have war in Iraq; they say it’s about oil – all this kind of stuff.” Yet 100 years ago, people were perhaps more likely to blame, say, secret organisations or the banks if anything went wrong, “so we’re interested in trying to understand why people now think that government is the villain.

“We think it’s got something to do with frustrations with democracy: people thinking ‘Why isn’t the world working out the way we want it to? Government must be to blame!’”

Some even go a step further, claiming that there’s a ‘New World Order’: an international government run by the mysterious Bilderberg Group. “People believe that about 100 financiers and government representatives meet in secret, and decide what’s going to happen in the future,” he explains. “There’s a guy in America – a wealthy guy, who’s funding political candidates – who believes that the financial crash of 2008 was engineered in order to get Obama into the White House. They think that they’re manipulating the whole world.”

But why would anyone believe that? “Some people would say ‘Because they’re crazy, they’re paranoid, deluded’. But it’s not just that; it’s partly because they want an explanation for why things keep going wrong.

“There’s this thing: ‘Is history a cock-up or is it a conspiracy?’ And the real explanation is probably it’s a cock-up. Why have we been living through a financial crisis? Probably because people messed up! But conspiracy theorists don’t think that’s a good enough explanation. They think somebody must be behind it.”

And, adds David, there may occasionally be method in their madness: “It’s easy to say conspiracy theorists are people who have lost out in some way, but it’s so widespread! We’re looking at it through history, and it’s not just the ‘losers’, there are lots of different kinds of people who believe in these conspiracies. We want to know why.”

Step 1: Start with the premise that any tragic incident is a massive, intricate government conspiracy.

Step 2: Denounce any information presented by a mainstream, non-conspiracy source that directly counters the predetermined conspiracy narrative as corrupt and part of the conspiracy.

Step 3: Monitor these same mainstream sources for information that supports the predetermined conspiracy narrative, even if only remotely. Mainstream media reporting mistakes that support your conspiracy (or any conspiracy really) must be treated as rare moments of truth, glimpses inside the Matrix. Any mainstream media reports in favor of the conspiracy should be treated like the word of God. Spam that information everywhere.

Step 4: Imagination is the same thing as undeniable fact. There is nothing wrong with manipulating Youtube videos and using Photoshop to edit information to make it more obvious for the stupid sheeple to understand.

Step 5: Reject the skeptics to the conspiracy theories aggressively. Call them out for being sheep, shills, Cointelpro, paid agents, et cetera. Do not ever doubt yourself, because if you think they are any of these nouns, then it is undeniably true. After all, the conspiracy theory you are trying to wake the world up to is a fact. Only a sheep would think otherwise.

Step 6: Bring up the founding of the Federal Reserve, the Bay of Pigs, The Gulf of Tonkin, and other well known deceptive schemes by the government often (every conversation if need be.) These actions were confessed by government, therefore every other conspiracy theory is true!

Step 7: Cite declassified documents often, as they are invaluable. If the government reports that a secret program was started and ended 60 years ago- DO NOT BELIEVE THEM. The secret programs for sure are still occurring and are now more massive, sinister, and successful than before.

Step 8: Remember that most of witnesses and victims involved in conspiracy event are actors. Medical examiners, emergency responders, the police, reporters, they are almost all in on it. The innocent people caught up in the conspiracy were either killed or have been threatened by the conspirators and are too afraid to come forward (or they possibly never existed to begin with.)

Step 9: Blitz the world with the truth until everyone deletes you on Facebook or you are banned from your favorite web sites. Lay low for a period, regroup at your favorite alternative web sites, get encouragement and reinforcement from the other awakened truth seekers, and start the process all over again with a new conspiracy.

Yes, he is a Reptilian

Firstly, I would like to admit that I am a true believer in David Icke’s reptilian theory. However, as time has passed, I’ve realized that Icke’s increasingly influenced by the very reptilians he believes he is fighting.

David Icke’s visual frequency is not attenuated to his own image; hence, he is unable to realize he is himself a reptilian. Theorists have speculated that Icke’s proven status as a reptilian is in fact a false-flag theory proposed by the reptilians to discredit him. This, of course, is a naive assumption buttressed only by a cult-like admiration for Icke’s manipulative, charismatic and altogether reptilian personality.

Look at his cold eyes, drained of all empathy.

Just beyond the thin veneer of Icke’s friendly exterior lies an emotionless obsession for control of others — the trademark of a reptilian. The cold stare in his eyes is an experience many have recounted upon close contact with his piercing and otherworldly gaze. He has absolutely no empathy for those he preaches to, and the ridiculous way he treats the reptilian threat is a classic example of hidden-in-plain-sight strategy. The saddest part of it all is that he, himself, does not — cannot–recognize his own reptilian nature.

On an interstitial plane between dimensions, the reptilians effectively have hidden their agenda through the vessel of Mr. Icke. As with others manipulated by this agenda, Mr. Icke himself is totally unaware of the possessors tainting his bloodline. His manipulative and viral reptilian fear, which he has made millions of dollars promoting, is precisely the favored tactic of the reptilians he so often rails against.

In essence, when one is afraid of the reptilians, they increasingly fall under the power of these MasonicIlluminati forces that permeate our corrupted bloodlines — perhaps our ape ancestors interbred with snakes, as hinted at in the biblical tale of Adam and Eve. No one has blood that is “clean” of reptilian influence, and the fear that has taken its grip on David Icke is proof that he, more than anyone else, is suffering from the pervasive and menacing power of reptilians.

If you’re a follower of some of the more wacky conspiracies, you have run into the theory of ancient aliens called the Anunnaki.

According to conspiracists, the Anunnaki were said to first come to Earth 450,000 years ago from their home planet named Nibiru, a brown dwarf 4 times the size of Earth that is on a 3,600-year elliptical orbit in our solar system.(source)

The Anunnaki are a reptilian alien race that crossbred with the ancient humans to create human-alien hybrid reptilians that now run the world. But this was after the evil Anunnaki won the battle with the good aliens from Mars.

This is all according to David Icke, truly one of the craziest conspiracists out there.

According to Icke, the secret societies running the world are human-alien hybrid reptilians with “secret knowledge” or, as he calls it, “advanced knowledge” which they use to control the world. Some how the human-alien reptilians take advantage of the sun’s power and “universal consciousness” to predict and manipulate people and world events. Crazy stuff.

It is this “secret knowledge” that the Icke brand of conspiracist believes exists and is being hoarded by the matrix masters.

Are you completely confused? It’s okay, i had to read several Icke books to get a handle on his brand of crazy. If you still want to learn more about this theory, watch the following video. This is an 8 minute excerpt from a much longer Icke video i did a couple of years ago.

Not only will you fully understand all the gobble-dee-gook preached by Icke conspiracists, but i guarantee you will be stunned at what is being proposed in this theory. It is truly crazy.

The bottom line is, EVERYTHING in David Icke’s world of conspiracies is rooted in the existence of these human-alien hybrid reptilians. EVERYTHING.

If the Anunnaki never existed, human-alien hybrid reptilians don’t exist. If human-alien hybrid reptilians don’t exist, Icke’s entire quiver of conspiracy theories goes down the crapper along with the bluster of every conspiracist buying into the Icke horse and pony show.

And this brings me to tonight’s two featured articles:

The first article is called “Who are the Anunnaki?.” It gives you a scholarly perspective of who the Anunnaki really were (hint: They weren’t aliens) (surprise! surprise!)

Dr. Michael S. Heiser

The second article is from a website called “sitchin is wrong.com“. Named after the author Zecharia Sitchin, it is Sitchin’s work upon which the Anunnaki theory is built. The site is run by Dr. Michael S. Heiser, a scholar of biblical and ancient Near Eastern languages, cultures, and religions. Dr. Heiser is openly challenging Zecharia Sitchin’s theory of the Anunnaki. As Dr. Heiser says on his website, “I can tell you–and show you–that what Zecharia Sitchin has written about Nibiru, the Anunnaki, the book of Genesis, the Nephilim, and a host of other things has absolutely no basis in the real data of the ancient world.”

Whether to debunk your favorite Icke-minded conspiracist or whether you’re just curious about crazy, i think you’ll enjoy this information.

Enjoy 🙂

Mason I. Bilderberg

Article 1: Who are the Anunnaki?

Are the Anunnaki real? Are they aliens?
Or are they part of a bigger picture?

Zecharia Sitchin

The “Anunnaki” are the major players in a paradigm making its way into popular folklore, via the work of the late Zecharia Sitchin, an economist by education and profession, and the author of several best-selling books, including Genesis Revisited, that explore ancient mythology and the mysterious megalithic ruins found around the globe. These various books also seek to demonstrate that there was in ancient times an extraterrestrial race that genetically manipulated mankind for various reasons. The Sitchin thesis (“Sitchinism”), now embraced by numerous other writers, who have incorporated it into what is apparently a new worldview, essentially asserts that these ancient Sumero-Babylonian gods, the Anunnaki, are aliens from the planet Nibiru (Sitchin‘s “12th Planet”), which passes by the earth every 3,500 years or so, at which time they planet-hop to the earth and create mischief.

Although the idea of the ancient gods being aliens may seem novel, the tendency to make the gods of old into “real people” or “flesh and blood” is not at all new, dating to before the time of the Greek historian Herodotus (5th c. BCE) and developed by the Greek philosopher Euhemeros or Evemeras (c. 300 BCE). This tendency is called, in fact, “euhemerism” or “evemerism,” which claims that the numerous gods of various cultures were not “mythical” but were in reality kings, queens, warriors and assorted heroes whose lives were turned into fairytales with the addition of miraculous details to their biographies. The current Anunnaki thesis is a modern version of evemerism, although it seeks to explain the miracles as not fabulous “additions” to the tales but genuine attributes of advanced extraterrestrials.

Unfortunately for those who would wish to see concrete evidence of such exciting notions as extraterrestrial visitation in Earth’s remote past, the Anunnaki will not be the place to look, as the true nature of these various gods and goddesses was already known long before the era of modern revisionism.

Article 2: Sitchin is wrong

The work of Zecharia Sitchin was brought to my attention in 2001, shortly after I completed my book, The Facade. As a trained scholar in ancient Semitic languages with a lifelong interest in UFOs and paranormal phenomena, I was naturally enthused about Mr. Sitchin’s studies, particularly since I had also heard he was a Sumerian scholar. I thought I had found a kindred spirit. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Zecharia Sitchin is not a scholar of ancient languages. What he has written in his books could neither pass peer review nor is it informed by factual data from the primary sources. I have yet to find anyone with credentials or demonstrable expertise in Sumerian, Akkadian, or any of the other ancient Semitic languages who has positively assessed Mr. Sitchin’s academic work.

The words Mr. Sitchin tells us refer to rocket ships have no such meanings according to the ancient Mesopotamians themselves. Likewise when Mr. Sitchin tells readers things like the Sumerians believed there were twelve planets, the Anunnaki were space travelers, Nibiru was the supposed 12th planet, etc., he is simply fabricating data. It isn’t a question of how he translates texts; the issue is that these ideas don’t exist in any cuneiform text at all. To persist in embracing Mr. Sitchin’s views on this matter (and a host of others) amounts to rejecting the legacy of the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian scribes whose labors have come down to us from the ages. Put bluntly, is it more coherent to believe a Mesopotamian scribe’s definition of a word, or Mr. Sitchin’s?

[ . . . ]

What I’ve said here is very straightforward. It would be quite easy to demonstrate that I am wrong. All one needs to do is produce texts that I say don’t exist, and produce verification of Sitchin’s translations by other experts (that’s called peer review). Since I don’t believe such evidence will be forthcoming, I wrote what follows as an open letter to Zecharia Sitchin in 2001. With Mr. Sitchin’s passing, I now direct the letter (rewritten on Jan 1, 2011) to his followers and other ancient astronaut theorists whose views are, in many ways, based upon Sitchin’s original work.

There is an internet radio broadcast called The Bob Charles Show that broadcasts 5 days a week at various times.

I mention this show because i’m having fun sifting through their audio archive listening to some of the craziest conspiratorial-woo crap you’ll find anywhere. This is pure entertainment. Where else can you find this kind of rambling nonsense?

To whet your appetite, below is an excerpt from the 11/10/13 The Bob Charles Show that i had transcribed.

Do note, i have highlighted every instance where these conspiracists use the catch-all, abstract phrase “they” to reference the faceless, nameless matrix masters.

Conspiracists are notorious for blaming “them” or “they” for every woe, unanswered question or mystery in the world.

You want to piss off a conspiracist? When they refer to “they,” ask them who “they” are. Two days ago a conspiracist told me “they” were the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc. I asked him to stop blaming buildings and get more specific (Who? What? When? Where?). He went nuts. To him i was suddenly one of “them.”

If you hear “they,” ask for specific names, dates and locations. Who (specifically) talked to who (specifically)? Who (specifically) is a member of the illuminati? Who (specifically) within the NSA? Who (specifically) within the government? Who (specifically) within the pharmaceutical industry? Who (specifically)?

No more blaming buildings and talking in abstract concepts about nameless, faceless people.

Recently I forced myself to read an article about certain claims by made by one Dr. Ellis Silver, an ecologist, about how humans came from another planet (read the article here). Now most people would think that any proof that we do not come from this planet would be in our DNA (and I’ll get to that later) but the article doesn’t even mention that. In fact, it claims because of certain aliments that humans tend to have that there is only one logical conclusion as to why we have them: We came from another world.

“This earth gravity is killing my back.”

One of the first claims made by Dr. Silver is that a lot of us have bad backs, and because of this he believes that humans must have evolve in a lower gravity environment then that of Earth’s.

Even if this was true that we did evolve in a lower gravity environment than that of Earth’s it wouldn’t be the cause of our bad backs. Eventually our bodies would adapt over a few generations to Earth’s gravity, and this guy is suggesting that we have been here for tens of thousands of years (actually between 60,000 to 200,000). This is more than enough time for our bodies to have adapted to Earth’s gravity.

Now the real reason for our bad backs isn’t because of the gravity, it’s actually a number of different things. It can be from placing to much stress on our backs (which other species do not do unless we make them) or injury, or sitting in a chair wrong for to long of a period of time, or being overweight, or a lack of exercise, or lifting up heavy objects in an improper manner. I’m not sure if Dr. Silver ignored these facts or not, but the sheer fact that some humans have back issues is not evidence that humans are from another world.

The second claim made for why humans are from another planet is because it can be difficult for women to give birth due to the size of a baby’s head, and that it can result in fatalities for both the mother and infant. He also claims that no other species on this planet has that problem.

This claim is just weird and flawed on several levels. First we are not the only species that has big heads when we are born. Infact many species of primates have big heads when they are born, as do many other species, and do experience complications from childbirth which can result in the deaths of both the mother and child.

Also, if it is true that having a big head when we are born which makes it difficult for a woman to give birth meant that we didn’t come from this planet, then why would we have evolved this trait on another planet also? We shouldn’t have, and therefore we shouldn’t even exist…

Just because we are born with big heads does not mean we did not come from this planet.

The third claim made for the believed reason why humans cannot have come from this planet is because we cannot stay in the sun for long periods of time, unlike lizards.

Well, we’re not lizards, which are cold blooded and actually need the heat from the sun inorder to function. We’re warm blooded, as are all other mammals, and do not require as much exposure to sun as a lizard does. Infact many mammal species are even less tolerant of the sun than we are, and either spend a lot of time in shaded areas, or are nocturnal and live underground, or in trees and bushes until night time.

Sunburn or alien detection?

Dr. Silver is also suggesting that because we can be harmed by the sun (i.e. get sunburned) that we must have come from another planet.

Actually the reason why we get sunburned isn’t because we evolved on another planet, it’s because we have a lot of exposed skin. Most other mammals have thick hair (i.e. fur) that protects their skin from direct exposure from the sunlight. Infact we’re not the only mammals that have a problem with getting sunburn. Pigs for example are very well known for getting sunburned, which is why they tend to roll around in mud. It’s not because they like it, it’s so they don’t get sunburned.

Now the forth claim that is made is that we have a strong dislike of naturally occurring foods, and for this reason we’re probably not from this planet.

A U.S. ecologist has claimed that humans are not from Earth but were put on the planet by aliens tens of thousands of years ago.

Dr Ellis Silver points to a number of physiological features to make his case for why humans did not evolve alongside other life on Earth, in his new book.

They range from humans suffering from bad backs – which he suggests is because we evolved in a world with lower gravity – to getting too easily sunburned and having difficulty giving birth.

Dr Ellis says that while the planet meets humans’ needs for the most part, it does not perhaps serve the species’ interests as well as the aliens who dropped us off imagined. In his book, HUMANS ARE NOT FROM EARTH: A SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE, the ecologist writes the human race has defects that mark it of being ‘not of this world’.

“This earth gravity is killing my back.”

‘Mankind is supposedly the most highly developed species on the planet, yet is surprisingly unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment: harmed by sunlight, a strong dislike for naturally occurring foods, ridiculously high rates of chronic disease, and more,’ he told Yahoo.

Dr Ellis says that humans might suffer from bad backs because they evolved on a world with lower gravity. He also says that it is strange that babies’ heads are so large and make it difficult for women to give birth, which can result in fatalities of the mother and infant.

Dr Ellis says that humans might suffer from bad backs (illustrated) because they evolved on a world with lower gravity. He also says that it is strange that babies’ heads are so large and make it difficult for women to give birth, which resulted in fatalities in earlier times.

No other native species on this planet has this problem, he says. He also believes humans are not designed to be as exposed to the sun as they are on Earth, as they cannot sunbathe for more than a week or two – unlike a lizard – and cannot be exposed to the sun every day without problems. Dr Ellis also claims humans are always ill and this might be because our body clocks have evolved to expects a 25 hour day, as proven by sleep researchers.

‘This is not a modern condition; the same factors can be traced all the way back through mankind’s history on Earth,’ he says.

He suggests that Neanderthals such as homo erectus were crossbred with another species, perhaps from Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to our solar system, some 4.37 light years away from the sun.

Modern conspiracy movements come and go so quickly that it can be hard to keep up with the new threats and concepts that get tossed around social media and the water cooler. So here’s a quick and easy list of some of the basic ideas you’ll often see related to conspiracy theories and popular pseudoscience. And because everyone likes pedantic, grade-school learning tropes, I did it in the form of the alphabet.

A is for Agenda 21, a non-binding and unenforceable United Nations policy paper written over two decades ago, devoted to promoting sustainability and smart growth. Some conspiracy theorists, at the prompting of Glenn Beck, have decided that Agenda 21 is actually a plot to depopulate rural areas, enact a green genocide and cram the survivors into Soviet-style urban clusters. It’s really not, and you can read the “sinister plan” for yourself online.

B is for Bankster, a portmanteau of “banker” and “gangster.” This term has caught on as a reference to the wealthy financiers and global elites who are supposedly controlling every element of society and government, enslaving the rest of us through their octopus tentacles of Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Government. Often, the term is modified as “foreign bankster,” which usually just means “Jews.”

C is for Chemtrail, a spray of noxious chemicals, biological agents meant to control the population, weather modification material or unspecified “toxins” left behind by airplanes acting under the control of the global elite. No compelling evidence of chemtrails exists, and almost everything used as proof of them is either fake or out of context. In reality, “chemtrails” are either contrails left by aircraft when the heat of their exhausts meets cold air, or simply unusual looking clouds.

D is for Denialism. No matter what beliefs are held by the mainstream and supported by solid evidence, you can always find someone who thinks we’re being lied to about them. Everything from the existence of AIDS to the moon landings to vaccine safety has an accompanying movement that says “everything we know is wrong” about these subjects, usually with nothing to prove it. Most of these movements are tied together, because if you’re going to be contrarian, you might as well be really contrarian.

E is for Energy. Many conspiracy theorists believe there is a massive plot by the government and oil companies to suppress free energy machines, which would break the oil industry’s grip on us and deliver unlimited power. As evidenced by the free availability of patents and myriad videos showing the non-existent miracles worked by these machines, this is not true. The laws of physics dictate that free energy can not exist, so there is no need to suppress it.

F is for False Flag. In political terms, a false flag is an action fabricated as a pretext for war. False flags are real things that have happened, but conspiracy believers see them in virtually every terrorist attack and shooting of the last century, all done as a pretext for Bankster-controlled politicians to make money and take away our rights. One false flag consistently cited by conspiracy theorists is Operation Northwoods, a US plan to gin up a war with Cuba. It was pooh-poohed by President Kennedy and never implemented.

HAARP, complete with SINISTER CLOUDS.

G is for Geoengineering. Like false flags, geoengineering is a real thing that has been turned into something else by conspiracy theorists. They see geoengineering as a way the global elite will reshape the planet to enslave us and keep us sick, using chemtrails, “weather warfare” and man-made natural disasters like typhoons and earthquakes. In reality, geoengineering is being studied as a way to reverse the effects of climate change (see Denialism.)

H is for HAARP, short for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. This was a research station in Alaska that used high frequency antennae to bounce radio signals off the ionosphere. Some see HAARP as a powerful weapon capable of weather modification, earthquakes, massive storms and electromagnetic blasts. HAARP has no such actual powers and ionospheric research has no relation to earthquakes or hurricanes. In addition, HAARP closed in March 2013, due to funding issues.

I is for Illuminati, a catch-all term for almost anyone wealthy, powerful or wealthy and powerful. Historically, the Bavarian Illuminati was a secret society founded in 1776 to oppose religious influence over secular life. It lasted less than a decade before being banned. The pop culture version of the Illuminati was remade from a combination of antisemitism, anti-Communism and fear of One World Government. No evidence exists that this Illuminati is real, despite virtually every celebrity, executive and politician posited to be a member.

Alex Jones: wrong pretty much all the time about pretty much everything.

J is for Jones, Alex. The popular radio host, film producer and founder of conspiracy clearing house Infowars.com is seen as the “face” of the conspiracy theory movement. Jones helped mainstream the view that a cadre of governments and businesses serve as a global elite, running the planet for their own benefit. His media platforms are a haven for those looking to “wake up” the rest of us to what’s “really going on,” despite being wrong pretty much all the time about pretty much everything. He’s also really entertaining to watch be interviewed.

K is for Kennedy, John, the center of a 50 year conspiracy theory regarding his assassination. Dozens of ideas have been put forth as to who “really” killed JFK, from the CIA to the Corsican Mafia to a nebulous group of businessmen to a Secret Service agent to Jackie Kennedy. Despite the weight of research on the subject (as many as 2,000 different books alone) and the staggering percentage of Americans who reject the “official story,” no theory has emerged with enough compelling evidence to displace Kennedy being shot by lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.

L is for Logical Fallacies, the poor arguments used in an attempt to make points lacking supporting evidence. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the many fallacies used against skepticism, such as the Gish Gallop (238234 Reasons Vaccines Are Evil, And You Can’t Possibly Respond to Them All), the argument from authority (we should listen to Dr. Oz about nuclear power because he’s a doctor) and post hoc rationalization (I caught the flu after I got the flu shot, therefore the flu shot did it). Good lists of fallacies can be found here and here.

And yet, as Slate’s Jeremy Stahl points out, millions of Americans hold these beliefs. In a Zogby poll taken six years ago, only 64 percent of U.S. adults agreed that the attacks “caught US intelligence and military forces off guard.” More than 30 percent chose a different conclusion: that “certain elements in the US government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives,” or that these government elements “actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks.”

How can this be? How can so many people, in the name of skepticism, promote so many absurdities?

The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics. Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.

Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness. But the prevalence of such belief, documented in surveys, has forced scholars to take it more seriously. Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.

We concerned citizens have noticed an increase in anti-chemtrail protests online and in the streets. Clearly your mind control is not working to its full potential, many of the sheeple have awakened. Therefore we request that you step up chemtrail spraying efforts at once, to bring them back into line. We know you will take this request seriously, because secret unaccountable governments are always highly swayed by online petitions.

Remember, it’s of the utmost importance that we, the iLLumiNuTTi, maintain control of the world. The best way to do this is to promote and maintain a docile, compliant populace using the airborne spraying of mind numbing, chemical agents.

It’s happened to all of us. Some friend we had in elementary school or from an old job is all of a sudden making super weird comments on Facebook, or you’re in a bar and some random is trying to talk to you about fluoride for some reason. It’s not always immediately clear. Like, I realized one day that people saying crazy things were always following it up with “Do your own research!” and then finally discovered that it was sort of a “buzzphrase” for conspiracy theorists.

So, I thought I’d compile a list of the ways to know that someone in your life is starting to head down to tin foil hat alley.

1 • Says insane thing (probably about chemtrails), and if you dispute, insists that you “Do your own research!”

This is one of the earliest signs of this type of crazy- and it’s also a major Glenn Beck-ism. I don’t know about you, but when I state a fact, I’m usually able to explain that fact. Especially if it’s something that may be controversial.

For instance, I do not so much believe that Joan Crawford beat her children. This is a thing that most people believe, because of the movie “Mommie Dearest”– however, when asked to explain, I don’t yell “Do your own research!” at people, I explain that all of the other children (save for Christopher) have refuted Christina’s book, as well as Crawford’s actual personal assistant, and Myrna Loy, and pretty much anyone else who was around during that time. I’m not saying I’m 100% definitely correct on this, but I err on the side of “probably not.”

Still, I don’t throw out something weird, get mad at people for not immediately taking me at my word, and then yell at them to do their own research. I mean, if they want to, that’s fine, but I’m usually quite able to support my arguments.

2 • Freaking Flouride

UGH. These people and their fluoride. They love to make up crap about how the government puts fluoride in the water to keep us dumb and rebellion-resistant, like no one has ever seen “Dr. Strangelove” before or something. This is usually what they start with, probably because it sounds slightly more realistic than like, Lizard People.

It is not, however, true. At all. And yes, I’ve “done my research.” But don’t tell that to these people, especially if they are drunk at a bar, because they will, in fact, start screaming at you about it. Fluoride and the “vaccinations cause autism” thing are like the gateway drugs into tin-foil hat land.

3 • Rejecting the tyranny of paragraph breaks

I swear to god, this is a thing. Whenever I see a comment that’s just a giant block of text with no breaks in it, I immediately just go “Welp, this one’s gonna be crazy” and I am pretty much always right. I don’t know why this is a thing, it just is.

4 • When a person who you already kinda know isn’t too swift starts trying to pretend that they are some kind of intellectual who is totally going to school you on “how things are in the world.”

I hate to say this, but it’s true. It’s always the dumb ones. I feel bad, because like, they’re usually just coming across this stuff for the first time and it is totally blowing their minds. Like, I already know that some people think that the Rothschilds control the world and that there are Mason things on the dollar bill and also THE MOON LANDING WAS FAKED or whatever. I’ve known for years, and I’ve already figured out that it’s all bullshit.

The more you read about history, the more you realize that people are so not getting it together to form a whole “New World Order” anytime soon. While there have been “conspiracy” type things throughout history (MKUltra, Tuskeegee, Project Paperclip, the COINTELPRO that actually existed and not the one people pretend still exists), they have been discovered fairly quickly. Because someone always has a big mouth.

5 • They use the term term Big Pharma (or Big Anything) in all seriousness

There are about a 1000 problems with the pharmaceutical industry, for sure. However, when your friend is talking about “Big Pharma” they are not usually talking so much about overpriced cancer medication as they are like, vaccines causing autism and things like that. Also, sane people, when discussing the problems with the pharmaceutical industry just do not say things like “Big Pharma” because they like being taken seriously.

Being awake or being asleep is like, tin-foil hat code for being hep to all kinds of nonsense. Which is why on those weird personal ads for Infowars everyone was like “I’ve been awake for 4 months” and things. Sheeple is what they call people who do not go along with them.

See, usually, these people are kind of “new.” Like, they think that the information they are about to rock you with is A) Nothing you have ever heard before or B) Something you are going to buy wholesale, immediately, because their “evidence” is so vastly compelling. If you do not believe them, you are obviously a sheep of a person.

As 12 million Americans “know,” the United States government is run by lizard people (or, to be scientifically accurate, reptilians). But they never said which members of the government are the reptilians. So we’re here to help.

Piecing together the latest groundbreaking research being conducted by commenters at conspiracy websites, we’ve been able to isolate a number of prominent individuals who possess reptilian-compatible bloodlines. As “ufochick” writes at DavidIcke.com (Icke is a prominent reptile theorist, as evidenced by his book at right), even if a person has compatible bloodlines, “they will not become a reptilian unless a reptilian entity inhabits their physical body.”

Or maybe it isn’t important. UnderstandingEvil.com describes how to tell if you’re “under assault” by reptilians; “Protector of Mankind” writes at Alien-UFOs.com that you can be a “reptilian/human hybrid.” It sort of varies. But according to Icke, this is how it works.

Thousands of years ago, the reptilian beings [from the constellations Orion, Sirius, and Draco] intervened on planet Earth and began interbreeding with humans. Not physically, however, but rather through the manipulation of the human coding, or DNA. Icke states that it is no coincidence that humans have fundamental reptilian genetics within their brain.

Whatever. The point being that it is easy to tell when you have or someone you know has been possessed by a reptile from outer space. While Icke doesn’t describe how to spot someone who has been manipulated by/merged with a reptilian — probably to protect his lucrative speaking circuit revenues — others have. The common signs (according to one source):

“predominance of green or hazel eyes that change color like a chameleon, but also blue eyes”

“piercing eyes”

“true red or reddish hair”

“a sense of not belonging to the human race”

“low blood pressure”

“deep compassion for fate of mankind”

“keen sight or hearing”

“physic abilities” (probably meant “psychic”)

“ESP”

“unexplained scars on body”

“UFO connections”

“capability to disrupt electrical appliances”

“love of space and science”

“alien contacts”

Good list! So let’s see if we can pinpoint our lizard overlords based on these hints. For example: Who has eyes that are green or hazel or blue but which may change to be different colors? Maybe you.

For centuries, the achievements of the past baffled modern societies. How could ancient empires build architectural marvels like the pyramids or the Nazca lines? Tune in and learn more about the theorists who think they’ve found the answer.

Cassandra Vanzant calls herself an “extraterrestrial communicator,” among other things. I appeared with her on CBS’s Anderson, hosted by journalist Anderson Cooper. (The show aired on April 24, 2012.) Vanzant claims to be in communication with alien intelligences whose messages she allegedly receives telepathically and then “translates.” She informed Anderson that he, too, had a star family, the “Lamarians” living in “the fourth dimension.” (See Nickell 2012.)

New Age Contactee

Cassandra Vanzant

Vanzant’s claims are legion. At one time or another (sometimes under the pseudonym “Cheryl Hill”) she has acted as a tarot-card reader and instructor, ghost hunter, spiritualist medium, angel communicant, ordained minister (nondenominational), professional psychic (although she failed to foresee a serious car accident in which she was a passenger), and of course, telepathic “Master Alien Communicator” (“About the author” 2012; “About me” 2012; Vanzant 2012a).

When an amused Anderson Cooper asked his TV audience how many believed Vanzant’s claimed ability to communicate with aliens, a single person raised her hand. The audience was right to be skeptical. Ms. Vanzant is only the most recent embodiment of the contactee, a person who purports to be in repeated communication with extraterrestrials.

Contactees emerged in the early 1950s, following an influx of flying saucer reports. The Space Brothers were supposedly making themselves known to a select group of chosen persons (who thus function rather like the prophets in religions of yore) to spread their supposedly advanced wisdom to mere Earthlings. The contactees tended to be mystical folk of a type we would today call New Agers, embracing Eastern “mystery” religions, notably Hinduism, as well as Western Messianic traditions (Story 2001, 134). Today, contactees have been largely supplanted by abductees who themselves now also frequently serve as alleged cosmic messengers (Nickell 2007, 255–56).

Fantasizing

Revealingly, like many other claimed extraterrestrial communicants (Nickell 2007, 251–58), Ms. Vanzant has several of the traits associated with a fantasy-prone personality. Such a person is sane and normal but with an unusual ability to fantasize, according to a pioneering study by Wilson and Barber (1983).

For example, Vanzant has ostensible imaginary friends (“Artoli” and “Mada­scrat”), claims to receive special messages from higher beings (not only extraterrestrials but also angels and spirit guides), purports to have psychic powers and fortunetelling abilities, reports having had an out-of-body/near-death experience (NDE), and so on, as well as appearing to generally have a rich fantasy life (Vanzant 2012a; see also her website, http://www.starfamilymessages.com).

Describing her near-death experience Van­zant (2012a) recalls floating up to the hospital roof and onward, “toward the stars.” She soon entered a “green tunnel,” then found herself “surrounded by angels, extraterrestrials, and spirit guides,” each of whom gave her a message. The experience, she says, “started my quest.” (The NDE—although only a hallucination produced by an altered brain state—is often life-transforming for the experiencer [Blackmore 1996].)

When you dive into the world of conspiracy theories (either as a skeptic, or a conspiracy theorist, or just a curious onlooker) you will ultimately come across some conspiracy theories that sound really, really bizarre…

In fact ever since I started doing serious skepticism and debunking and investigating conspiracy theories I have found conspiracy theories so strange that I could never have possibly have thought of them (which is probably a good thing).

Now while there are a lot of things I have noticed about bizarre conspiracy theories, I have narrowed it down to five different things.

So here are five things I’ve noticed about bizarre conspiracy theories:

First I want to say that anyone who believes that the world is controlled by shape-shifting aliens, or that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by lasers, or that the government is using radio signals to attack peoples minds, or believes in crisis actors, or believes that chemtrails are real is not necessarily mentally ill… I’m just saying it’s a pretty strong indicator of mental illness, especially when you consider the fact that others who also believe in such conspiracy theories have engaged in behavior that strongly indicates that they are mentally ill (such as making long and incoherent rants, or harassing people, or making threats), or actually has been found out or proven to be mentally ill.

It’s not just the people who believe in them either. Many of the people whom have created the most bizarre conspiracy theories out there are they themselves believed to be mentally ill. Even the ones who are very intelligent and hold college degrees, but come up with these weird conspiracy theories, are automatically assumed to be mentally ill because it’s really the most logical explanation for many skeptics concerning a person whom is very smart but believes in really weird stuff.

4. There is no deep end to them.

Have you ever heard or read about a conspiracy theory that made you think, “there is no way that there can be something stranger than this…” Well, I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but trust me when I say this, there is a conspiracy theory out there that is more bizarre than what you have just heard or read about. And if there isn’t one, one will be invented soon enough.

Now I don’t blame anyone for believing that whenever they hear about a crazy conspiracy theory that they believe that it is the craziest conspiracy theory out there, I use to believe that myself when I came across a really bizarre conspiracy, but then I would be proven wrong again and again whenever I kept coming across one even more bizarre than the next one, it kind of destroyed my ability to believe that there is a bottom to conspiracy theory craziness.

It really should not surprise anyone that there are some conspiracy theories out there that are either so weird, or so bizarre, that some people don’t believe that it is a real conspiracy theory (well, as real as one can be) and that it was made up as a parody of other conspiracy theories, or some type of satire, or, as some conspiracy theorists may claim, dis-information.

This is something that even I have assumed at times whenever I see a bizarre conspiracy theory, either in the hope that no one can seriously be so crazy that they could come up with such a thing, or that it just looks like satire.

In fact some have actually turned out to be satire (or a hoax) but because some conspiracy theorists can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is fake, some of them assume that it is real.

With Pluto’s recent demotion from the ranks of proper planets, the slippery definition of what is or is not a planet has revived several astronomical conspiracy theories. Learn about the most bizarre conspiracies surrounding Planet X in this episode.